ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

This is not new. Seth Godin, author of six marketing bestsellers (including “Permission Marketing” and “All Marketers are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World”), gave a great talk at Google in February this year. I watched the video only this month. Can’t help but be impressed by his astute analysis and concrete examples, and yet disturbed by our collective shallowness. So here it is (00:48:01):

IN Dutton & Aron’s Two Bridges experiment (1974), male participants were asked to walk across the Capilano Canyon suspension bridge in Vancouver. Others were asked to walk over a low bridge. Although the men were told that they were being asked about creativity and scenery, they were actually being tested on their emotions. The woman interviewing them subtly dropped them her phone number in the middle of the questions. The same woman did the interviews on both the low and high bridges. The end results: Among those who walked on the high bridge, 60% used the number and called the woman back. Among those who walked on low bridge, 30% picked up the phone.

What caused this great discrepancy? Is it:

Nature: The men acted according to “who they are”. Those who walked on the high bridge are single, adventurous men while those who took the low bridge are attached, less adventurous men.

Context: The men responded according to “where they are” – “high bridge” suggests adventure and romance while “low bridge” suggests otherwise.

Hormones: As the men on the high bridge are in a dangerous situation, they had an adrenaline rush, [got into a state of high arousal] and so are in a more romantic mood.

Hope: The men on the high bridge were more suicidal. Approached by an attractive woman, their mood changed to “hope” and so…

Sat in a very interesting module, “Storytelling in Research and Practice”, last night. We started by watching the recording of an excellent stage play called “Handle with Care”. An ethnographical performance based on qualitative research among women with metastatic breast cancer.

The theme seems to be “Fear blocks people’s ears”: Fear in the patient and fear among the patient’s relatives and friends. So marvellously executed. Constantly bombarding the audience with multiple points of views — a young woman, a middle-aged one, an elderly one; the whiner, the “never-say-dier”; the the mother, the daughter/son, the husband, the neighbour, the doctor(s); how others’ apparent concern and advice could be “smothering” or “just wanting to know ‘You’re feeling fine’ “; becoming “invisible” once perceived as sick; issues of “control” versus “no control”; “hope” for cure, less pain, longer life, emotional support…. Truly thought-provoking and ever so witty. Read the rest of this entry »

Y’all know the relativist argument: Other people have views they hold as strongly as you hold yours. Those views are incompatible with yours. Thus, a sense of certainty is insufficient to guarantee truth. Therefore, we can’t trust certainty. Therefore, we have no way to decide whose views are right.

Good things come from this relativism, including a willingness to listen to others and maybe even a little humility. (That was, at least, until the Bush Doctrine declared humility to be unpatriotic.) But relativism contradicts a tenet of knowledge: To believe something is to believe that it’s true. Relativism wants to keep sneaking in a qualifier — “Of course, I might be dead wrong” — that seems to destroy the possibility of knowledge.

Worse, relativism can sap action: Since all sincerely held beliefs are equally valid, why go to any pains to defend yours?